


The hardest part is yet to come

by estel_willow, mandsangelfox



Series: At Our Swiftest Speed [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3871801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandsangelfox/pseuds/mandsangelfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"We're going to have to get our hands dirty again if we're going to stop Hydra," she said, "Nick's way might be the only way." There was a slight quirk of affection to her tone as she told him, "There's a chance you might be in the wrong business."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The hardest part is yet to come

There were only a number of places that Steve would be in order to collect his thoughts and it hadn't taken Natasha long to work them out in the new S.H.I.E.L.D. base. After all, she'd gotten to know him quite well during their time working together, when she'd been removed from partnering with Clint while he spent time at home with his family and almost traversed the world with Steve. She'd even helped him a little bit with his search for the Winter Soldier but after her entire life had been dumped onto the internet by her own hand, she'd had to retreat for a bit and so having a new base to settle down in was a good thing for her. It wasn't like she had anywhere else to, her covers had all been blown, the location of her safe houses had been shared and whatever chance she might have had of leaving with Bruce...

She pressed her lips together, feeling her teeth grinding in frustration at the thought of Bruce. She supposed that was what she got for sharing the deepest parts of her past that she'd previously voiced only to Clint in the darkness of missions past. But she supposed that was her fault too: fool me once and all. Twice she'd opened herself up to someone she was- that she wanted and twice she'd been turned down. At least Clint only turned her down once. 

Not allowing herself to sit and feel sorry for herself any longer than she already had done, and with the disturbing rumour going around that the Maximoff girl's powers were going out of control and that reports of her brother's death were greatly exaggerated, she wanted to check in with Steve. After all, a lot of this stuff was still new to him. It was still new to her, too, but that was hardly the point. She'd become a master of rolling with the punches. 

"I thought I'd find you here," she told him, leaning her shoulder against the door to the garage, arms folded and legs crossed at the ankle. The side of her head was resting on the door frame and a small smile was on her lips. "How long've you been working on that bike?"

Despite the many technological distractions available in this day and age there was just something to be said for getting your hands dirty and nothing quite did that like tinkering with a car or in this case motorbike. Though most of his hard work was ruined by the fact he had a habit of throwing it into whatever equipment Hydra was using to further their own ends, but that didn't really matter right now as Steve had no real urgent need to turn his choice of transportation into a weapon. He'd left Pietro in the hands of the surgeons and his sister knowing that somebody would update him when there was something of importance to report, but he just needed to get away from it all and clear his head. You would think he would have been used by people coming back from the dead hence his cavalier remark about walking it off during an earlier battle with Hydra, but truth be told Steve was a little afraid of it as well because the last ghost to haunt him had been Bucky's and then he was right there, alive, but not the same.

What if Pietro was the same way? There was no guarantee that Strucker hadn't done something during his experimentation which meant Pietro might come back different.

"That predictable, huh?" He asked with a small smirk as he sat back, grease covered hands reaching for the nearby rag he'd taken to carrying in the back pocket of his jeans, the material being worked over the stains. "And this one?" He pursed his lips and shrugged. "Not as long as the first one I had, but that's long gone."

"You're kinda getting to be, old man," she teased, moving further into the garage when it became apparent that he didn't want to be alone and wasn't going to send her away. At least one of the men in her life wanted her around. She chided herself immediately for that self-pitying thought. Love was for children, she was stronger than that and if nothing else had been proven to her recently it was that she perhaps wasn't deserving of the happily ever after she'd allowed herself to long for twice now. "You'd have still had it if you hadn't been such a careless driver," she pointed out, fingers trailing along the hood of a nearby car as she approached Steve, perching on the trunk, feet on the back fender. 

She tilted her head. "So... Pietro's not dead."

Steve made a gesture of clutching at his chest as if hurt by the teasing remark in regards to his age before he just watched Natasha as she took her time with moving around the garage. Everything about the Black Widow was so deliberate and he doubted she even realised it, it was just something she did. "I don't know," he shared with a shrug. "I mean that corner was pretty tight and I guess I weighed up the options, to keep the bike on the road or throw it into the nearest Hydra threat and the latter won out." 

He pushed away from the bike and rose to his feet, the rag still being worked over his hands.

"Apparently not," Steve said with a nod. "Not quite sure how that's possible. Both Clint and I checked for a pulse and there was nothing, but..." He trailed off and settled for shrugging his shoulders. "Death doesn't have quite the same effect as it used to."

"There's a lot of things we don't understand still, Steve," Natasha said softly, eyes meeting his after watching Steve working the rag over his hands. "It's not your fault, you know." She could see the guilt sitting on his shoulders, misplaced as it always ways. She thought he might apologise for there being no air in space if he had long enough to think about how that might be his fault. "You checked for a pulse, like you said." 

She lifted her shoulder, "He's in the right place now and he'll be okay, won't he? So no harm no foul." She swallowed, lips pressing together briefly before she lifted her head. "You got any idea what happened? People are freaked out because of Wanda's powers apparently having gone awry again. Fury'll have a small heart attack at the cost of fixing the damage she's caused along the north and east corridors." Natasha looked almost... amused by the prospect.

The thing about Steve was that he took responsibility for the things that happened on the battlefield because he was the leader, the person who made the decisions and if people got hurt because of them well then he had some of the blame to share. "Yeah, I know." He glanced up at Natasha, trying to get a read on her, to see how she was doing after everything. She was a hard one to pinpoint because he'd learned over time that just because she was smiling and giving some smartass comment didn't mean that she was okay, but she didn't like to share and care so it was difficult to get an accurate assessment of her emotional state. The battle with Ultron and his drones had been rough on everybody but really that hadn't been the issue, it had been Wanda getting into their heads and playing on their own worst fears. 

"Well, Fury already had the good Doctor cutting into him," Steve threw out oh so casually. "But then he started bleeding and the medical team was called in." He watched the flicker of amusement pass over Natasha's face when she mentioned the cost of fixing the damage. "I'd say that's fair recompense for the whole let's cut into your brother to see what makes him tick." His brow furrowed. "It was weird, Wanda just seemed to know he was alive and it was as though she was feeling his pain."

A momentary flash of Bucky drawling _"Twins, gotta love 'em, Stevie"_ had Steve's lips curling into a small smile until he caught himself. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah, Cap," Natasha responded with a lift of one shoulder, "I'm fine." Why wouldn't she be? She had processed the memories that had been dredged up by Wanda's manipulations, handled the resurgence of things she'd much rather were left in the past. It was part of her training: accept things and move on. Don't linger. 

She would much rather talk about Steve and what had happened with Wanda than dwell on herself and her own demons. Recent events had proven pretty conclusively that her demons were hers and hers alone. She couldn't share them with others. She wet her lower lip. "There were a lot of studies done on twins, to see if they had some kind of psychic link. A lot of people seemed to think they do. I guess it helps when one of them's a telepath," she pointed out with an upward quirk of her lips. "Makes sense that Fury would want to go full Dr Frankenstein on a body before it had even gone fully cold. It's good to know your enemy, I suppose. He's just trying to be prepared." Not that there was much to be prepared about: from what Wanda had told them briefly, they were the only two who had survived the experiments. It wouldn't have surprised her if their drive for revenge was what had saved them. 

"I mean it," she added after a moment of hesitation, ducking into Steve's eye line and getting a bit closer until she was stood in front of him, looking up at the man she was proud to consider a friend. "It wasn't your fault."

Honestly? He expected that response, but it didn't hurt to ask, especially as he got the feeling that the only person who really asked Natasha about Natasha was Clint and he was currently absent, enjoying the birth of his latest son. Which by the way? Steve had not seen coming, especially since Clint was, well, Clint. 

"Yeah, well, he doesn't get to play God," Steve murmured. "I've had enough experience with men trying to play God and it never ends well." And it didn't, just look at what the Red Skull had tried to do and Tony to a lesser or greater extent had nearly brought about a huge disaster just because he had power and thought there was no problem playing around with it. "I'd much rather face things as they come then sink to the same level as Hydra." Steve had a sinking feeling that he and Fury were never going to see eye to eye, but they'd made progress since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D and the fact Fury had gone behind his back left him very unsettled, wondering just what lengths Nick was willing to go in order to win this war. 

Sure he had done some really grim stuff in during the war, but that had been a very different time, a very different struggle, people should have learned from their mistakes.

"Not point dwelling on it," he said with a shrug as he met and held Natasha's gaze. "Just gotta focus on what we do next."

"Which is what, exactly?" Natasha asked, "Where do you see this going? Clint's taking extended leave - I don't know if he's ever going to come back-" and that bothered her a lot more than it should have done considering jealousy is something that she should have done away with a great number of years ago, "-and the rest of the team's disbanded. Those we have left..." It wasn't the same, but then perhaps that was what they needed. Something new. A new dynamic. 

She pushed her hair back behind her ear. "You think they'll still stay?"

"I hope so," Steve said quite honestly. "They've got a chance here, to make a difference, use the powers Strucker brought out in them for good rather than for revenge." Honestly Steve just believed in people probably more than he should but he knew a little something about wanting to protect your country, the people you loved and the lengths you'd be willing to go to achieve those goals. Most of the original team had left, for different reasons, but Natasha had stayed. The Black Widow who was renowned for being a solo act had stayed, to work as a team and that meant a lot to Steve, especially as he had come to consider her a really good friend. Somebody he trusted with his life. 

He was silent for a moment as he considered her earlier question. "Honestly? I don't know, but we still have a lot of wrong to right. Hydra isn't just going to give up because what's that saying? Cut off one head and two more shall take its place? That and the world needs us now more than ever, especially with everything that happened with Ultron. People are going to be scared and we need to show them that whatever happens that we're here for them even if some of them don't want us to be."

"I'm not sure they'd be quite so behind us if they knew that Ultron was our doing," Natasha pointed out dryly, folding her arms again and leaning against a nearby car. "You think that there's room in the world for a team that can't even keep its own members in line?" 

She lifted her shoulders and looked down at the floor. "As long as you're still leading us, I'll stick around." She stood up, meeting Steve's eyes again and for the briefest moment there was a maelstrom behind them that was quickly dismissed, a glimpse of the vulnerability that she normally only showed when she as going to be manipulating a mark. "Just make sure you keep things interesting, Rogers." 

She pushed up off the car and started moving towards the door again, pausing only to look at him over her shoulder. "We're going to have to get our hands dirty again if we're going to stop Hydra," she said, "Nick's way might be the only way." There was a slight quirk of affection to her tone as she told him, "There's a chance you might be in the wrong business."

Steve would have answered the first question but by the time he'd thought of an appropriate response Natasha was already moving away, leaving the weighted words that she'd stick around if he kept things interesting. There definitely wouldn't be any shortage of that because for all the battles they fought there was always going to be a bigger war and life was nothing if not interesting. Steve didn't know what he would do if tomorrow he woke up and the war had suddenly ended. It was a scary thought; he'd be a relic of a time long since past with no purpose in this new world and he wasn't sure he really wanted to deal with that particular revelation.

"That is a distinct possibility," he admitted with a chuckle as Natasha's words harkened back to a time when they had both lost all faith in everything they'd come to believe about the organisation called S.H.I.E.L.D. "But I think as long as I have you at my side I'll survive it."

Natasha had turned to head back out of the garage when Steve's words made her pause at the threshold, a small smile curling the edge of her lips upwards although she didn't turn around, she just kept moving. 

"Me too, Steve," she told him although she was already halfway down the connecting corridor before she voiced that particular thought. It was better left unsaid. For her own sanity as much as anything else.


End file.
